Wireless cellular communications networks include several cells where each cell includes a base station that provides mobile communications and network services to mobile devices. In the wireless cellular networks, signals from one or more mobile devices in a cell coverage area of a base station are received by the base station, which then connects a call to a land-line telephone network and/or connects the mobile device to a network, such as the internet. In typical wireless cellular systems, when a base station connects a mobile device to the internet, a mobile application running on the mobile device is used to connect the mobile application with an internet based service provider. Such service providers may provide such as email, stock market information, weather information, media streaming, video games, GPS and/or location-based services, banking, and the like.
The explosion in number and variety of mobile applications, and the growing complexity and proliferation of mobile devices, has created an increase of bandwidth consumption. The increase in bandwidth consumption requires more sophisticated approaches to the coordination between mobile devices and the wireless network infrastructure in order to provide more efficient allocation of network resources. However, different mobile applications may have different network resource requirements to ensure a higher Quality of Experience (QoE) and/or Quality of Service (QoS) for the services the mobile application utilizes. Therefore, the methods that a mobile device and/or a mobile application may use for obtaining services and/or requesting network resources may be dependent on a type of mobile application being executed by the mobile terminal.
Current methods for allocating network resources to mobile devices are “network centric”. For example, in most wireless networks, a base station may include one or more scheduling algorithms in order to allocate network resources to mobile devices within the base station's cell coverage area. Additionally, the base station may obtain information from the mobile devices within the base station's cell coverage area to better determine how to efficiently allocate the base station's network resources. However, the conventional methods for allocating resources typically do not account for mobile device and/or mobile application specific parameters for obtaining desired services and/or requesting desired network resources. In order for a network centric approach to take into account mobile device and/or mobile application specific parameters for obtaining desired services and/or requesting desired network resources, the network infrastructure may have to comply with a single and/or universal standard for allocating network resources, which may be inconvenient for each wireless network vendor to implement.